I am a quilter - a recently-retired woman living with my husband in the Nebraska Panhandle. We are surrounded by beautiful semi-arid ranch country, and treeless hills and fields under incredibly wide blue skies. We are located far from the upheaval found often in large towns or cities. I am blessed to have delicious time to quilt and to appreciate my peaceful moments in an unpeaceful world.

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Friday, November 26, 2010

Uh oh - mess up on the inside corner

This is my Tree Skirt, and I'm planning on adding HSTs around the entire perimeter - they are already made. I figured that inside corner would sew up to a nice 45 degree angle to possibly hand stitch together. I carefully sewed to the stopping point - you know, stop at 1/4 short of the seam end.

A little messy, but "it will be OK." I sewed the HST's (not shown on the above top) to the triangular log cabin units on the side.

But look what happens! They don't match up at all! What the heck????

OK, some of you are laughing because YOU know why, but I learn best by doing, even if doing is wrong! lol I sure was surprised and even put out some calls for HELP!!!

After thinking for 2 hours I realize that the diagonal measurement (see the triangle) is longer than the leg of the triangle! I hope the photos describe better than what I'm trying to say. If you make this kind of inside corner, with HSTs, you cannot have a continuous line of HSTs because now, they measure a different width since they are on an angle.

My solution is to remove the HSTs from the triangular log cabin blocks, then border them with plain strips, at 1 3/8 raw. The HSTs are 2 inches raw. IMHO - (that mean don't bet money on me!) This is because a strip that is 1 3/8 inch on the diagonal, measures a bit shy of 2 inches from edge to edge - the size of my HST. (Remember how you figure a block size on the diagonal - measure block size x 1.414)

8 comments:

This seems just like the sort of 'learning experience' that our quilting foremothers might have run into - before the days of Google and Amazon - and the reson they were so creative. I love to see these uh-oh solutions in antique quilts. Can't wait to see how yours turns out! Thanks for sharing ;-)

I had a learning experience like that on my last UFO project that I posted. The blocks were set on point with sashing. I did it the way I always do with sashing added to 2 sides of each block. When I joined all the rows the blocks weren't centered. I had to add a strip to one side and the bottom. Duh! I just wasn't thinking the whole thing through. Lesson learned.